1999 is the fifth year that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences has covered the Grammy Awards on the Internet, but it is the first year that IBM has participated. This year, IBM is a partner in the…
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The official website of the 41st Annual Grammy Awards was launched earlier this month with the help of a media team from the Atlanta division of International Business Machines. The Java-based site provides background information on the artists and events of the music-awards extravaganza, taking place Wednesday evening, February 24, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.
Some Webcasters were given a stay of execution in late June, when the Librarian of Congress announced that they would be required to pay royalties at half the rate proposed by an arbitration panel last winter.
The new rate, announced June 19 by James H. Billington, will be .07¢ per song per listener, and will apply to pure Webcasters as well as over-the-air radio stations that put their programming on the Internet. Royalties will be retroactive, levied from October 1998 until the end of 2002. A new, and still undetermined, rate will be instituted by New Year's Day, 2003. The US…
Apple's unexpected initial success with its iTunes subscription music service shocked and pleased many in the music industry—and appears likely to prompt a rash of imitators.
Launched May 2, iTunes sold more than a million individual songs in its first week of operation, vastly exceeding the projections of Apple executives and their counterparts in the music industry. It boosted the value of Apple's stock by approximately 50%—the share price closed at $18.30 on May 9, a huge leap from its 52-week low of $12.72 on April 17. It also caused a surge in demand for Apple's sleek iPod portable…
Up from the deep: Torrance, CA-based Wherehouse Entertainment announced last week that it will purchase Blockbuster Music from Viacom Inc. for $115 million. The merged operation will have 598 stores throughout North America, second only to Minnesota-based Musicland. The deal comes at the end of a prolonged slump for the music industry, one that was particularly hard for Blockbuster.
Wherehouse recently emerged from bankruptcy, and during its court-mandated restructuring period closed its marginal stores. Blockbuster Music had its own difficulties after churning its upper management and…
Michael Fremer investigates the Parasound Halo JC 1 monoblock power amplifier, exclaiming, "The 5-to-1 ratio of cost to retail price suggests that the "raw" cost of the JC 1 is about $600—a number almost impossible to believe, given the superb build quality and sheer heft of this powerhouse monoblock." And then there is the sound.
John Atkinson points out that he's been glowingly reviewing KEF loudspeakers for years, and so looked forward to his time with the KEF Reference 207 loudspeaker. True to the breed, the latest effort from the Kent, UK manufacturer gave JA plenty to admire.
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Recorded music as a packaged-goods commodity continues to decline, according to figures released March 4 by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Shipments to retailers from record labels in 2003 dropped 7.2% from the previous year's level, the trade group reported. A total of 798.4 million units in all formats (CD, DVD, cassette tape, and vinyl) were shipped in 2003, compared to 859.7 million units in 2002. The decline followed a 7.8% drop in 2002 from the previous year. On a dollar basis, shipments from record companies to retailers went down 4.3% in 2003 versus a 6.8%…
A "digital rights management" (DRM) company has been awarded a patent for its "tickets" to Internet-based entertainment. Bethesda, MD–based ContentGuard Holdings, Inc. announced July 27 that it has been granted a patent for its "digital ticket" system, which allows users access to digital entertainment—music, video, graphics, and e-books—from any Internet-connected device.
ContentGuard's business model appears similar to the phone card model, where users buy a fixed number of minutes, which can be used from any telephone. ContentGuard codes can be embedded in users' computers, cell phones…
As Larry Greenhill states in his review of the MartinLogan Prodigy loudspeaker, "Electrostatic speakers are my passion." But Greenhill's heard a lot of great 'stats in his time, so he was "both excited and uneasy" when a review pair of MartinLogan's latest arrived in his listening room. He needn't have worried.
His interest tweaked at the 1999 CE and Hi-Fi Shows, John Atkinson wanted a closer listen to the speaker Sony was using to promote SACD. Although the Sony ES SS-M9ED loudspeaker arrived at the Stereophile offices later that year, the review didn't make it to print until this month…
Times are tough in the online audio delivery market, with long-established start-ups struggling to keep pace with competing formats from Microsoft as well as the ever pervasive MP3. Particularly hard hit has been Liquid Audio, which along with competitor Real Audio, has for the last few years attempted to create the de facto standard for online music commerce.
Steel Partners II, which owns approximately 8.2% of the common shares of Liquid Audio and has been publicly critical of company management, made an offer October 22 to purchase the remainder of Liquid for $3 per share, or almost $68…
Warner Music Group may have just announced its first DVD-Audio titles (see related story), but an upstart independent label is claiming the first DVD-A discs actually available for sale. In an attempt to establish itself as the leader in the new DVD-Audio format, 5.1 Entertainment Group's Silverline Records says it has begun shipping the first commercially available 24-bit/96kHz DVD-Audio disc, Swingin' for the Fences, by Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band.
The release, described by the label as a big-band swing/jazz recording, is said to have arrived for sale at traditional and online music…